to that pass that Stair or Arniston
could not mend it, and I don't think even you, Alan, can do it much harm.'"

I am strongly reminded of the monks in the darker part of the Middle Ages.
To a certain proportion of them, perhaps two out of five, we are indebted
for the preservation of literature, and their contemporaries for good
teaching and mitigation of socials evils. But the remaining three were the
fleas and flies and thistles and briars with whom the satirist lumps them,
about a century before the Reformation:

"Flen, flyys, and freris, populum domini male caedunt;
Thystlis and breris crescentia gramina laedunt.
Christe nolens guerras qui cuncta pace tueris,
Destrue per terras breris, flen, flyys, and freris.
Flen, flyys, and freris, foul falle hem thys fyften yeris,
For non that her is lovit flen, flyys ne freris."[667]

I should not be quite so savage with my second class. Taken together, they
may be made to give useful warning to those who are engaged in learning
under better auspices: aye, even useful hints; for bad things are very
often only good things spoiled or misused. My plan is that of a predecessor
in the time of Edward the Second:

"Meum est propositum genti imperitae
Artes frugi reddere melioris vitae."[668]

To this end I have spoken with freedom of books as books, of opinions as
opinions, of ignorance as ignorance, of {366} presumption as presumption;
and of writers as I judge may be fairly inferred from what they have
written. Some--to whom I am therefore under great obligation--have
permitted me to enlarge my plan by assaults to which I have alluded;
assaults which allow a privilege of retort, of which I have often availed
myself; assaults which give my readers a right of partnership in the
amusement which I myself have received.

For the present I cut and run: a Catiline, pursued by a chorus of Ciceros,
with _Quousque tandem? Quamdiu nos? Nihil ne te?_[669] ending with, _In te
conferri pestem istam jam pridem oportebat, quam tu in nos omnes jamdiu
machinaris!_ I carry with me the reflection that I have furnished to those
who need it such a magazine of warnings as they will not find elsewhere; _a
signatis cavetote_:[670] and I throw back at my pursuers--_Valete, doctores
sine doctrina; facite ut proxima congressu vos salvos corporibus et sanos
mentibus videamus._[671] Here ends the Budget of Paradoxes.

{367}

* * * * *

APPENDIX.